Explain this.....

[Highside]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWknp5iXCMU&feature=related
I cant figure out how this could possibly work.

 

[Mnemic]

link not working.

edit: Started to work.. hrm.

 

[sandalscout]

wild, maybe some sort of vacuum?

 

[Mnemic]

http://www.fishighway.com/

Same principle I believe.

edit:
NVM, airbubbles would break the type of balance the fishhighway works.

Has to be a balance of pressure somewhere, or a crapload of water being pumped up maybe.

They never show you the entire setup in those vids, so the magic making it happen is concealed.

 

[Fanof49ASU]

The water movement isn't that great........the fish are swimming normally.....the bubbles don't rise any quicker than usual......very weird!!!

 

[Fanof49ASU]

I found this in a search.

This is how they describe...

The top enclosure is sealed at the top and open at the bottom to create a water seal (just like the Caterfall). If you pump the water (not air) from anywhere in the top, the water is actually drawn from the bottom keeping the EXACT same water level at the top. Nothing here defies physics.

Example
Take a water bottle. Poke a hole in the top and insert a straw, tube, etc. It must be air tight. Fill the bottle all the way up and turn it over onto a bowl of water. Put the straw in your mouth before doing so or the water will run over the bowl. Once you create the water seal with the bowl, start sucking. Notice the water level in the bottle remains the same, but the volume of water in the bowl decreases.

http://www.arofanatics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=303778&page=2

Though.....I still don't understand it.

 

[crumbletop]

My bet is instead of having an air pump on the bubbler, it is simply an airstone attached to an air hose. At the top of the aquarium is a vacuum pump that creates enough suction to hold the water at a particular height and it pulls air through the stone.

 

[crumbletop]

Mark -- I don't think that method described would work because it doesn't account for the air bubbling up.

 

[Mnemic]

He has to have something pulling the air back out at the top. Maybe some pump is pulling water/air out and cycling it back to the base.

think a siphon breaking is bad, imagine what happens if the seal at the top of that tank breaks

 

[DMBillies]

All I'm going to say is that if that tank isn't sealed at the top (which would be the easiest way to make it) and they do have a vacuum pump for sucking air back out, it better have one heck of a check valve system for preventing air getting into that tank when the power fails...

 

[DawgDiggity]

I see a couple of things. Number One the upside down cube is sealed tight. It is just like those dog, cat watering bowls that has a 1 liter bottle upside down full but only keeps a minimal amount of water to fill the bowl.

Number Two they are using some membrane or pressure valve to allow air to escape. Or,!!! they may just have a bleed valve that they check every 4-8 hrs! For everyone that has a U-tube overfluw setup it is just like removing that trapped air in the top of the bend. Once you run a tube from inside the top of that cube to below the water level you have negative pressure.

There are tons of options to release the air with this negative pressure inside the top of the cube. Maybe you could set up a dosing pump to release air at a steady pace? Or just bleed it moments before everyone comes over to oohhh and ahhh. In the video there is 1/4-3/8" of air at the top.

 

[DMBillies]

Sounds right dawg. The physics is easy to understand (pull a full glass up out of the water upside down) but the practicality of the set-up isn't. As you said, there has to be something to bleed the air out. Seems likely it is a pump that you run periodically and a valve to seal it up.

 

[DawgDiggity]

You are right. The tube would have to be primed with some suction.. With a water siphon the wieght of the water pulling down creates suction and water does not expand like air....
...So the vacuum would actually have to lift the wieght of the water into that void?

I am sending this over to a master plumber and an engineer now.

You know once we've got this all figured out we will have to build one!

 

[DawgDiggity]

Experiment Failed...

the check valve at the top of the bottle worked in that it did not allow air in the top of the bottle but, whenever air was blown in, from the bottom, the water level inside the bottle dropped. No air was vented out of the checkvalve. Essentially the weight of the water creates a vacuum in the void. Any air blown in only allows the void to grow in volume.

Also when a vaccum was applied to the top tube the water level only rose. No air entered from the bottom tube.

My only thought at this point is that the air release and uptake must be a closed loop.

 

[NeveSSL]

FWIW, this type of setup is actually in the AquaLifter manual (on a smaller scale, of course).



Brandon